The Origins of the Maryland-Style Pizza Origin Story
It’s Columbus Day weekend, one of the year’s slow news cycles, and that can only mean one thing: it’s time for the fabled Maryland-Style Pizza Origin Story. From TV personalities weaving colorful narratives to a local blog’s persistent retelling, our love for pizza origin stories is a DMV cultural hallmark. Let’s trace this fascination through the decades, culminating in The MoCo Show’s modern-day revival of the tale.
1960s: Willard Scott’s 102-Year-Old Recipe
Willard Scott, then WRC-TV’s affable weatherman, knew how to capture the imagination when the weather was mild and news was slow. During a 1965 Labor Day broadcast, Scott delivered an extended birthday greeting to 102-year-old Ida Mae Pisano of Bethesda, claiming the Italian immigrant learned to make rectangular, sweet-sauce pizza from her grandmother in Sicily. “Isn't she beautiful!” Scott declared, holding up a square slice. The legend was born.
1970s: Maury Povich’s Maryland Pizza Melee
By the 1970s, Montgomery County’s suburbs were booming, and its appetite for local pizza lore grew alongside. Maury Povich, then hosting WTTG’s Panorama, leaned into this with a 1978 segment, “The Inventor of Maryland Pizza.” He introduced Rockville Pizza Oven owner John Enchovy, who claimed he pioneered the style. When Povich then brought out a furious Bob Beall, who founded Ledo Pizza in the 1950s, the chairs started flying. From Wheaton to Gaithersburg, talk of "Maryland-style" pies dominated MoCo's workplace water coolers and living room book clubs. Ledo added 16 locations that year.
1980s: Jim Vance’s DC Origin Story
In the 1980s, as Montgomery County’s malls and communities flourished, WRC-TV anchor Jim Vance added his voice to the pizza narrative. In a 1986 News4 segment, Vance reported that Ben's Chili Bowl invented Maryland-style pizza after Mayor Marion Barry ordered a pie and no one had the guts to tell him it wasn't on the menu. Ben flattened chili dog buns onto a baking sheet and used tomato sauce from the chili cook line, sweetened with an undisclosed white additive, possibly saccharine. “They call it Maryland-style, but it's really DC-style,” Vance said with a wry smile.
1990s: Oprah Winfrey’s Pizza Giveaway
In the 1990s, Montgomery County found a new pizza champion in Oprah Winfrey, whose Baltimore media roots tied her to Maryland’s heart. In a 1994 Oprah Winfrey Show segment, she shared a story of Gentleman Jim's, a Twinbrook restaurant on the verge of bankruptcy, where owners resorted to using less costly Swiss cheese rather than mozzarella. Winfrey ordered 10,000 pies and had them delivered across the county, where, astonishingly, people developed a taste for the robust, tangy pizza.
2010s/2020s: Alex Tsironis and The MoCo Show’s Revival
Fast forward to the 2010s, when Montgomery County’s love for pizza lore met the digital age through The MoCo Show, a hyper-local blog founded by Alex Tsironis. Since 2016, Tsironis has kept the Maryland-style pizza story alive during slow news cycles with the reliably high-click article, “The Origins of Maryland Style Pizza.” The MoCo Show narrative has the style originating in Glenmont at the Stained Glass Pub, where, coincidentally, Tsironis also won a lifetime supply of free pizza in 2016.
Montgomery County’s love for a good origin story, especially one involving a square slice, will never go out of style.
